Wilson & Spelling Tests

You don’t need a spelling program with Wilson. The second half of the lesson, the encoding sections, are spelling lessons. Just use those for spelling, or take words from the step you are working on and have students use those for a weekly spelling test.

As far as the fact that it can take up to 2and a half years to teach each syllable type, well, those 2 years are going to pass whether or not you do the Wilson. If you stick with it, the 2 years will have been worth it.

Subsequent teachers who do not use Wilson can present a problem if you start a student in Wilson and no one else will finish it up. Can you request more teachers in your school become trained so there will be more teachers teaching it? Can you tell the parents of your Wilson students that they need to make the request in writing that their child must have it in their IEP that Wilson is the program to be used and finished?

Actually I do not think you can specify any type of reading program. As I recall Sue Barton put up a wording for multisensory explicit phonics programming on her webpage somewhere. You could use such a thing on an IEP (says nothing about the Barton system per se. It wouldn’t specify which OG (or even necessarily OG, there are a handful of ohter programs that might work— ie LiPS, etc.) You might try looking at:
www.brightsolutions.us (not com) or www.bartonreading.com (I’d check the first one first, there is commercial material on both sites but also some good general info.

Barring that you could word any statements that would mean that the child “should” be getting explicit, multisensory instruction in reading.

Now of course, you can have a very dandy IEP (actually a wonderful one) and if it isn’t followed it doesnt’ do anybody any good. Sadly that is quite often the case.

BTW, I agree that Wilso does have quite a lot of spelling. In OG spelling is about as important as reading, and spelling is perceived as being reading backwards (encoding vs decoding).

—des

Hmmm… you can’t specify the progrma, but maybe you could specify that the *same* program be used from year to year.

And the length of time is a big issue with Wilson and O-G in general; when I taught O-G it was in the tutorial setting where it originated, where we really could go “as fast as you can, as slow as you must.” (I had a lot more training, though, and could make changes without losing the systematic structure… but it’s a tough call and it’s really easy to cut too much.)
I was immersed in it and saw that the teachers who took much more time than I would have thought necessary to go through the syllables often had *much* better results than newer teachers (like me) who moved on as soon as the student “got it” in our opinion, and did a lot less review and practice and drill. (I did the database of student progress so I got a close look at it. Even the least dyslexic students but especially the most made more progress over the course of the year, and even more in the longer run… but you don’t have a ‘longer run’ option).
I would be looking at wrapping up the year thinking of the next year, though, and making sure they had lots of good solid practice in skills they’ll need. I would RESIST the urge to “expose” them to everything. If I wanted to teach soem VV or less regular patterns, I would pick one or two really useful ones and teach them *****well.***** The primary point of these programs is the thorough, systematic process of teaching little chunks to *mastery* and then teaching the integration of the skill. Yes, it takes longer…. yes, it works better.
What grade are they in?

Hello,

I’ll try to answer everyone’s questions all in one post. I teach 4th and 5th grade. The teachers that follow me may be resistant to using the Wilson program. Though, I may be able to talk 3rd grade teacher into using the Wilson program. The others do use some form of Orton supposedly. Sue what you said about the teacher taking more time to teach reading concepts and did a better job made me feel better!

What do you people feel about the Language! program versus Wilson?

I have Language! training but not Wilson. I’ll tell you, Language! is pretty cumbersome to deal with…too many components. If decoding is the primary problem then stick with Wilson. I use a program similar to Phono-Graphix, but better, called ABeCeDarian. I just think you need to focus on the decoding and fluency primarily because few of us get the kids 2-3 hours a day to teach all of language arts.

Janis

Hi,

I share your pain on the length of time it takes to complete the whole Wilson Program. In 1:1 sessions, I can go faster because I don’t spend much time on sounds/patterns that are either absorbed quickly by the student or for which they already are connected to the correct way to decode them. In a small-group setting, it takes years.

In my last school district, we tried to vertically integrate the Wilson curriculum (Gr 6-8) and met with teacher resistance. (And when teachers resist, they can be solidly stoic about it, don’t we know for sure!) In that district, I was an instructional “coach” for multi-sensory systematic phonics at the middle-school level. From over ten years of experience, I can tell you that many people—teacher included—have poor phonemic awareness and cannot often articulate, differentiate, or manipulate the sounds they are are to teach to their students. Hard to teach phonics if your own phonics groundwork is shaky. No wonder they were resistant!

Since we have only a cluster of kids that need PA and phonics training, why not have the required number of these specialists in each building (or have the teacher travel if the day isn’t filled)?

The right kind of testing by the teacher is vital to understanding where students are currently functioning and whether they need more phonics, more comprehension strategies, more fluency, or a combination of these areas.

Is there any way that the student could stay with you for “decoding strategies” and go to the new teacher for “comprehension strategies?”